heedless; nevertheless, you are marked. So I went on for a time, grateful that Ardor had saved me, and didnât ask why. I suppose I was unwilling to ask, for fear of an answer.
Yet Iâd changed under the Smithâs hammer. His blows had shaken part of me loose, and I felt weaker for it. What was my shadow, in the dream, if not my shade given form? Now I feared my shade might go wandering before-times, while I still lived, and leave the rest of me to rust. If that was a gift, I was ungrateful for it.
Ardor gave me other things: a song, a handful of berries, and the gift of seeing in the dark. It may be a kind of trickery, this way of seeing, but ever since, Iâve been able to make my way in darkness when others stumbled, so long as I looked askance.
Even in the day I saw more clearly, both the quick and the subtle: the hawfinch high among the branches, the lynx in the dappled shadows, the hare quivering in the long grass. Often, from the corners of my eyes, I glimpsed the shadows of presences, not quite seen, not quite unseen. The old gods had not fled the Kingswood after all. They were the trees of the forest, and they drew breath in winter and let it out in summer, year upon year, and all the animals of the woods flickered by while the trees stood still. The Blood accused them of malice, but they bore us no ill will unless we came with fire and axes.
And everywhere in the Kingswood I saw signs of Ardorâs presence, signs that had gone unmarked before I ate the firethorn berries. The Smith, Hearthkeeper, and Wildfi re were manifest in the distant pounding of the armorersâ hammers and the smoke of the huntsmanâs cook fire in trees riven by lightning.
In such signs I have long since tried to read the godâs wishes. But priests study all their lives to divine the will of the gods, and still dispute their omens. Each of the twelve gods has three avatars, by which they show themselves to us, but in truth the gods are so far beyond us they are unknowable. In their wars and alliances, they make and unmake the world. How can I be certain what Ardor made of me in the forge of the Kingswood, and for what purpose? Perhaps I have already done whatever I was meant to do.
CHAPTER 1
UpsideDown Days
watched for the Midsummerâs eve bonfire from my lair on Bald Pate. I meant to return to the village a year to the day Iâd left for the Kingswood. But why should the day matter? The seasons go round the year and never come back, for, as everyone knows, time moves in a spiral, not a circle. To persist in folly made me no less a fool. Once Iâd counted myself brave for venturing into the Kingswood alone; now I wondered if it would not have been braver to stay among people. Solitude had withered around me like a husk. Yet I stayed until the bonfire released me.
On Midsummer morning I walked down through the ripening fields to the croft of Naâs sister, Az. I carried my sheepskin cloak under one arm and shaded my eyes with my hand. A great humming and chaffering of insects rose around me as I walked, as if the fields had a voice under the Sun.
When I stepped through the gate into the mud-walled yard, the croft seemed deserted save for the hens scratching around the stone feet of the granary and a sow sleeping in the Sun. But I saw smoke coming from the summer kitchen, a lean-to built against the hut and roofed by the huge leaves of a golden hopvine that clambered up the poles. The yard smelled of dung and dust and meat cooking.
I stooped under the pitched roof of the lean-to and peered inside. Az was squatting by the fire pit in the scattered yellow light that came through the leaves. She was smaller than I remembered, and I wondered if sheâd dwindled since I saw her last. I hadnât thought she was so old. Her head grew forward from the rounded hump of her shoulders, and she had to strain to look up at me. I couldnât bear for her not to recognize me, so I called out, âAz,
Yet Iâd changed under the Smithâs hammer. His blows had shaken part of me loose, and I felt weaker for it. What was my shadow, in the dream, if not my shade given form? Now I feared my shade might go wandering before-times, while I still lived, and leave the rest of me to rust. If that was a gift, I was ungrateful for it.
Ardor gave me other things: a song, a handful of berries, and the gift of seeing in the dark. It may be a kind of trickery, this way of seeing, but ever since, Iâve been able to make my way in darkness when others stumbled, so long as I looked askance.
Even in the day I saw more clearly, both the quick and the subtle: the hawfinch high among the branches, the lynx in the dappled shadows, the hare quivering in the long grass. Often, from the corners of my eyes, I glimpsed the shadows of presences, not quite seen, not quite unseen. The old gods had not fled the Kingswood after all. They were the trees of the forest, and they drew breath in winter and let it out in summer, year upon year, and all the animals of the woods flickered by while the trees stood still. The Blood accused them of malice, but they bore us no ill will unless we came with fire and axes.
And everywhere in the Kingswood I saw signs of Ardorâs presence, signs that had gone unmarked before I ate the firethorn berries. The Smith, Hearthkeeper, and Wildfi re were manifest in the distant pounding of the armorersâ hammers and the smoke of the huntsmanâs cook fire in trees riven by lightning.
In such signs I have long since tried to read the godâs wishes. But priests study all their lives to divine the will of the gods, and still dispute their omens. Each of the twelve gods has three avatars, by which they show themselves to us, but in truth the gods are so far beyond us they are unknowable. In their wars and alliances, they make and unmake the world. How can I be certain what Ardor made of me in the forge of the Kingswood, and for what purpose? Perhaps I have already done whatever I was meant to do.
CHAPTER 1
UpsideDown Days
watched for the Midsummerâs eve bonfire from my lair on Bald Pate. I meant to return to the village a year to the day Iâd left for the Kingswood. But why should the day matter? The seasons go round the year and never come back, for, as everyone knows, time moves in a spiral, not a circle. To persist in folly made me no less a fool. Once Iâd counted myself brave for venturing into the Kingswood alone; now I wondered if it would not have been braver to stay among people. Solitude had withered around me like a husk. Yet I stayed until the bonfire released me.
On Midsummer morning I walked down through the ripening fields to the croft of Naâs sister, Az. I carried my sheepskin cloak under one arm and shaded my eyes with my hand. A great humming and chaffering of insects rose around me as I walked, as if the fields had a voice under the Sun.
When I stepped through the gate into the mud-walled yard, the croft seemed deserted save for the hens scratching around the stone feet of the granary and a sow sleeping in the Sun. But I saw smoke coming from the summer kitchen, a lean-to built against the hut and roofed by the huge leaves of a golden hopvine that clambered up the poles. The yard smelled of dung and dust and meat cooking.
I stooped under the pitched roof of the lean-to and peered inside. Az was squatting by the fire pit in the scattered yellow light that came through the leaves. She was smaller than I remembered, and I wondered if sheâd dwindled since I saw her last. I hadnât thought she was so old. Her head grew forward from the rounded hump of her shoulders, and she had to strain to look up at me. I couldnât bear for her not to recognize me, so I called out, âAz,
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